Open source 3D graphics drivers for ATI R600 garphics cards has been submitted to the kernel-next tree for possible inclusion in the Linux kernel 2.6.32. "David Airlie has pushed a horde of new code into his drm-next Git tree, which is what will get pulled into the Linux 2.6.32 kernel once the merge window is open. Most prominently, this new DRM code brings support for kernel mode-setting with R600 class hardware as well as 3D support."
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Member since:2006-01-24
I think its great news, I just disagree with the hyperbole used by lemur2 to describe these developments, the proposed timeframes for seeing a performant and stable driver wildly optimistic, and I think that if you want high-performance 3D on Linux, NVidia is by far the best solution currently.
Member since:2005-10-13
Agreed, although I'm not quite as pessimistic as you are. I don't think the OSS drivers will ever match AMD/NVIDIA's binary drivers 100%, but I think we could have something by next Christmas that is reasonably full-featured and fast.
I don't think you can necessarily blame the fact that the drivers are OSS for why they have come about so slowly. I mean the NVidia drivers work pretty well, but the ATI ones were horrible for years. And the Intel drivers on Windows were very bad when I tried using them once. I don't think others were much better - I heard terrible things about Matrox's drivers as well. It just takes a lot of time and effort to really optimize your drivers fully for hardware as complicated as a modern graphics card.
Member since:2007-02-17
My point was best "bang-for-buck" performance, not best high performance.
Perhaps your misreading of what I said was why you are flying off the handle on this topic ... but I'm still inclined to think you have a nvidia barrow of some kind to push, and if not that then you probably have a "proprietary is better" barrow to push.
Edited 2009-09-14 05:45 UTC
Member since:
2005-10-13
"Production ready" is relative, but it's going to be in Fedora 12 released in November. The notice that started this whole thing says that he's adding it to rawhide: http://airlied.livejournal.com/68097.html (Dave Arlie works for Red Hat).
It will almost certainly be buggy, but it's not useless. It's already working well with: desktop effects, Google Earth, Open Arena, Nexuiz, SuperTuxKart, Half Life, and Deus Ex (in WINE).
Anyway, even if you aren't sold on these drivers ever getting as good as nvidia's binary drivers, you should at least recognize that this is good news for all the platforms that they don't support. Linux PPC/ARM, or Haiku, for example.